What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to try to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.

It is interesting to note that our enemy has quite a preoccupation with this very same “political distraction.”

Indeed, back in 2011, Muslim Brotherhood front groups approached the Obama administration and demanded to look at the training materials for the FBI and law enforcement agencies to see what words they were using. It’s curious that instead of telling the Brotherhood to go away with the explanation that labels didn’t “accomplish” or “change” anything, the administration docilely obliged. More curious still, when the Brotherhood returned and demanded that all mention of words connected to Islam, such as “jihad,” “Sharia” and “radical Islam,” be purged from the manuals, the administration again docilely obliged.

So we have an intriguing situation: when people who want to protect America implore Obama to use the term “radical Islam” to describe the force waging war on us, he refuses and angrily responds that “different” names don’t make things go away. But when a totalitarian ideology that seeks to destroy our civilization (and boasts that it will do so by our own hands) tells us not to use the label “radical Islam” when we were doing that, Obama follows the orders.

And so, as author Stephen Coughlin has documented in his work Catastrophic Failure, the Obama administration rooted out all references to jihad and Islam from U.S. intelligence agency manuals. And this action and attitude has affected every realm of government. That’s why in the State Department, for example, an official is not even allowed to ask an immigrant about his views on jihad or Sharia law before approving his visa application. In fact, a “counterterrorism” government guide counsels that keeping Muslims out of the country for supporting Sharia law violates the First Amendment.

Such is the devious mentality behind Obama’s “defense strategy” in the terror war, which demands that American officials and investigators are to consider only violent or criminal conduct when trying to keep America safe. Radical ideology is to be ignored, particularly if it has the veneer of “religious expression.”

As a result, when the Muslim Orlando mass murderer, Omar Mateen, verbalized his support for killing unbelievers for the sake of Allah and Islam, it was to be ignored, and the FBI did ignore it. That’s why they let him slide. The Bureau didn’t want to break the administration’s rules and let the potential hazard to innocent American lives get in the way of fighting racism and Islamophobia.

And so Tamerlan and Dzhokhar went on to set off their bombs at the Boston Marathon Massacre, killing 3 people (including 8-year-old Martin Richard) and injuring an estimated 264 on April 15, 2013. And they made it very clear that they did it for the sake of Islam and Allah.

But labels don’t matter.

Labels did matter, though, to Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik on December 2, 2015, when they opened fire on Farook’s municipal government workmates at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, leaving 14 people dead and 21 wounded. Malik and Farook were inspired by the same ideas that the Tsarnaevs were inspired by. Indeed, just before the attack, Malik had been using her social media to announce her love of jihad and to pledge her undying devotion to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. She was linked to a jihadist mosque in Pakistan. Farook, meanwhile, had made contact with several Muslim terrorist organizations.

But the Americans who were slaughtered by Malik and Farook, in the administration’s view, were clearly a small price to pay for the necessary pursuit of a utopian label-free world. That’s why Malik’s social media proclamations were never discovered before the San Bernardino massacre — because immigration officials were forbidden to review social media as part of their screening process. The Obama administration, through the highest levels of the Department of Homeland Security, explicitly banned examination of the social media of immigration applicants. John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis, explained that this rule was in place because of the fear of a “civil liberties” backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration.

Even more intriguing was how the administration had actually shut down a project that would have most likely led authorities to Farook and Malik and prevented the attack in the first place. Investigator Phil Haney, a former Department of Homeland Security agent, has revealed that the government had quashed a surveillance program that he had created to identify global networks that were smuggling Islamists into the United States. The database investigated groups that had ties to Farook and Malik as far back as 2012. But the State Department and the DHS Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties believed that Islamophobia was at play and that the “civil rights” of the Muslims being monitored were being violated, even though an overwhelming majority of them were not even American citizens. The administration officials accused Haney of profiling Muslims, removed his security clearance and shut down his program, destroying all 67 records of information that he had gathered. One of those records included an investigation into an organization with ties to the mosque in Riverside, Calif., that Farook had attended.

Haney has emphasized that if his work had been allowed to continue that it very well could have prevented the San Bernardino massacre. According to Haney:

Either Syed would have been put on the no-fly list because association with that mosque, and/or the K-1 visa that his wife was given may have been denied because of his association with a known organization.

Haney has also stated that he was looking into Tablighi Jamaat, a Sunni Islamic group tied to the fundamentalist Deobandi movement – a movement that also has ties to the Pakistani school attended by Malik.

In contrast to the president’s seemingly befuddled query on what the use of the label “radical Islam” would accomplish, Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and military strategist who authored the masterpiece The Art of War, which serves as an indispensable guide on military strategy, offers a key insight on the crucial importance of identify one’s enemy.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

In order to even have a chance of defeating radical Islam, therefore, which has declared war on us, Sun Tzu taught us the importance of making a threat assessment. We have to label our enemy and to isolate what inspires and sanctions the enemy’s war against us.

Stephen Coughlin emphasizes this urgent rule, explaining that, as Sun Tzu instructed, we must know what motivates the jihadists and always keep in mind that it is completely irrelevant whether their comprehension of their own doctrine is accurate or not, because we must know what motivates the enemy regardless of whether his motivations are based in legitimate understandings. In other words, Coughlin writes, a national security professional’s duty:

…is not to know true Islam; it is to identify and establish a functional threat doctrine, regardless of whether that doctrine accurately tracks with ‘true’ Islam or not. What matters is that we understand the enemy’s doctrines, not whether he is correct about them.

Today, unfortunately, with Obama in charge, the very opposite of what Sun Tzu and Stephen Coughlin urge must happen in order to defeat an enemy is taking place. Our language is controlled and the enemy cannot be named. Actually, naming the enemy is now hazardous for anyone working in the Obama administration. Coughlin notes: “Today, FBI and Homeland Security analysts are sanctioned if they refer to the Islamic Movement by name, even if citing to threat sources that use those same Islamic terms.”

Thus, Coughlin paints the horrifying portrait for us: the enemy has established “language dominance” over us and this situation “puts groups like the Muslim Brotherhood out of reach of investigators, national security analysts, and even concerned Members of Congress.” In other words, Brotherhood-linked groups and individuals are now above and outside of the law.

Yes, using “labels” really might accomplish something after all.

During his Tuesday speech, in referring to “radical Islam,” Obama pronounced vehemently: “Not once has an adviser of mine said, ‘Man, if we use that phrase, we are going to turn this whole thing around,’ not once.”

Doubtless the president’s statement is correct. His advisers surely do not want to be punished or let go. They know what their orders are – and what they are allowed, and not allowed, to say.

It is obvious why not once has anyone with whom Obama has surrounded himself with ever said anything to him that would empower the administration to defeat America’s enemies, defend this nation and save American lives.

I am not enamoured of this term, “radical Islam.” I suppose it is a step in the right direction from the former administration’s claim that we were at war with “terrorists.”

The term radical Islam can be misleading if not dishonest. That we are at war with radical Islam or Islamism (and not as Mr. Coughlin calls it, true Islam), indicates that radical Islam is a perversion of authentic Islam. Often I hear people on “my side” make this very point.

I agree with you Steve Klein. However, right now as we plainly see, things are SO FAR from the place where you are standing, If no one n most media or in government, is even “allowed” to use the term Islam in connection with terror, to use the words Jihad or Sharia, it would be progress to use “radical Islam” over what’s happening. So Muslim rape gangs in the UK are said to consist of “Asian” men (to the chagrin of Chinese residents I’m sure).

The whole thing is right out of the oldTwilight Zone or a Ray Bradbury novel. Surreal.

The term “radical Islam” is indeed misleading because it is obvious to anyone who connects the dots between so-called “acts of terrorism” and the Koran, the Hadith, and the history of Islamic expansion that we are indeed fighting the true Islam. The violence, such as that at Orlando, may be terrorism to the victims but to the Muslim perpetrator(s) it is an act of devotion. The so-called “terrorists” are simply devout Muslims carrying out the will of Allah to dominated the world.

The root meaning of the term ‘radical’, is an allegiance to the ORIGINAL CONCEPTS AND PRECEPTS OF A BELIEF SYSTEM. So yes, ‘radical islam’ is a correct term. Sadly, the level of literacy in the West is so low, that this is NOT understood….. the ‘rules for radicals’ group either distorted the term, or these ‘rules’ to destroy the opposition, are true to the roots of fascism.

I still believe that rather than “radical Islam” the correct definition is FUNDAMENTAL ISLAM. After all, everything that the jihadists are doing is going by the basic/fundamental principles that the Qur’an and Ahadith instruct in regard to rules of engagement when dealing with non-Muslim individuals and secular societies. The term “radical” makes it sound like a person is going excessively overboard in their expressed conduct of their belief system, while “Fundamental” indicates they are just “going by the book” in what is expected of them to do. By the way “Jihadists” are basically the military arm of Islam, engaged in the effort to convert the entire world to accept their Allah and prophet, Muhammad, and abide by Sharia Law. This, however, also entails a power struggle between the Sunni and Shi’a to see which one will be the victor in controlling the emerging Caliphate. They want to kill/dominate each other while at the same time they both want to kill the Infidels and apostates that get in the way.

Some interesting comments. In truth, the Islam as practised by terrorists is pure, orthodox, Islam, as practised by the first generation of Islamic terrorists in 7th Century Arabia. The actions of today’s terrorists don’t differ one whit from that of Mohammad and his Companions.

There have been numerous stories about employers demanding access to the social media accounts of job applicants.

Although there has been resistance to obtaining passwords, and rightly so, there’s nothing to stop anyone looking at a person’s online activity; unless, they are possibly murderers and terrorists with an islamic motive, or so it seems.

Somewhere in his brilliant thesis “To Our Great Detriment,” Coughlin also makes the astute (and common sense) observation that the intentional decision NOT to study your enemy’s stated motivating ideology is irrational to the extreme from a military strategy standpoint.

I knew that people like Spencer and Coughlin had been censored at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an absolute travesty. But if it’s really true that law enforcement now essentially get zero in training on how Islam reliably produces a certain numer of terrorists, that’s absolutely INSANE!!! Cultural suicide in the name of political correctness.

Robert nailed it all down in this article I’ll pass it along to everyone I know.
Every attack from 911 to Orlando was planned and carried out by a Muslim even if an American citizen still had a Muslim name. Period. All in the name of Islam.

Remember “not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim”. I don’t even hear that one anymore.

Someone needs to put CAIR and the muslim brotherhood in a choke hold! What are the steps to do this? Who do we reach in the govt that is willing?

We have to arrest, detain, disband, interrogate, deport and/or in-prison all muslim political groups. Then go after the “known wolves” and shut down migration from the war torn middle east. It’s exactly what Sun Tzu would do….this act alone would name the enemy.

If O has become so strangled with his PC, then he too becomes the enemy of the state.
His consistent warring and destabilizing of Democratically elected countries, is another sign, he is not all there in the head.

And the false notion of “radical” Islam is a noteworthy example of that, as it perpetuates assertions by clueless and/or deceitful politicians and “journalists” that “one of the world’s great religions has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists”.

Of course, one is supposed to just accept that a Muslim’s compliance with Qur’an/Sunn’ah constitutes extremism.

There is no such thing as “radical” Islam. There is Islam–amputations and all.

Claims that Qur’an and other Islamic texts can be, and are interpreted in many ways, has to also mean, then, that the strictest interpretation is as valid as any other.

Notice, that when the IS beheads someone it’s reported as “a perversion” of the faith, and when our Salafist Saudi “allies” do that it’s labeled “a strict interpretation”.

Note, too, how those same politicians and media folks–along with other useful idiots–almost universally parrot the same “radical” Islam line as fact. It’s difficult to image they’ve all read Qur’an/Sunn’ah and came to the same conclusion.

The term “radical Islamic terrorism” takes that to an even greater level of stupidity

And if he’s so concerned about not granting IS a victory by calling it “IS/Islamic State”, then why must he pronounce “Taliban” as “Tolly-bahn”? Or Pakistan “Pockee-stahn”? Talk about flimsy reasoning and argumentation. Why was he beaming after listing to Bergdahl’s father open his Rose Garden blathering by speaking Tolly-bahn? Total sicko.

The know yourself requirement is just as important. This is why I have written pessimistic posts about the Judeo-Christian ability to withstand Jihad, that it has its weaknesses. Obviously, people are at least as sensitive to self-criticism as to any analysis of the enemy, proabably more so, but it must be done if victory is desired.

Ignoring Sun Tzu, at a more basic level, not using those terms encourages violent action by ISIS and pro-Muslim groups, partly by them using other names. More important;y, not using those descriptors would make Americans more complacent, and not recognize the enemy.

(Excerpt) …Coughlin writes, a national security professional’s duty: “…is not to know true Islam; it is to identify and establish a functional threat doctrine, regardless of whether that doctrine accurately tracks with ‘true’ Islam or not. What matters is that we understand the enemy’s doctrines, not whether he is correct about them.

Well, the following “doctrine” certainly reflects “True Islam” and is in-and-of-itself very much an established and functional threat doctrine:

From the sayings of Muhammad:

“The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: I AM COMMANDED TO FIGHT WITH MEN until they testify that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is His servant and His Apostle, face our qiblah (direction of prayer), eat what we slaughter, and pray like us. When they do that, their life and property are unlawful for us except what is due to them. They will have the same rights as the Muslims have, and have the same responsibilities as the Muslims have.”
(Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 14, No. 2635) [caps, mine]

“It has been narrated by ‘Umar b. al-Khattib that he heard the Messenger of Allah
(may peace be upon him) say: I WILL EXPEL THE JEWS AND CHRISTIANS from the Arabian Peninsula AND WILL NOT LEAVE ANY BUT MUSLIM.” (Sahih Muslim Book 019, Number 4366)
[caps, mine]

Rules of Engagement Doctrine from the Qur’an:

“Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority: their abode will be the Fire: And evil is the home of the wrong-doers!” (Qur’an:003.151)

“Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens. Thus (are ye commanded): but if it had been Allah’s Will, He could certainly have exacted retribution from them (Himself); but (He lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the Way of Allah,- He will never let their deeds be lost.” (Qur’an:047.004)

“And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do.” (Qur’an:008.039)

“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;” (Qur’an:005.033)

“Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): “I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.” (Qur’an:008.012)

“O Prophet! rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the Unbelievers: for these are a people without understanding.” (Qur’an:008.065)

Public-Relations Doctrine by Council on American Islamic Relations spokesmen:

CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) Spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Chairman for CAIR said to the Minneapolis Star Tribune on April 4, 1993. “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. …But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.”
————————————–
Omar Ahmad – 5/16/2004, Co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6473
————————————–

CAIR – Nihad Awad, founder and and Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), announcing his support for Hamas at Barry University on March 22, 1994. Transcript:
Awad: I used to support the PLO, and I used to be the President of the General Union of Palestine Students which is part of the PLO here in the United States, but after I researched the situation inside Palestine and outside, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.http://www.investigativeproject.org/223/cairs-awad-in-support-of-the-hamas-movement
————————————————————-
Herman Mustafa Carroll, Director, CAIR Dallas-Fort Worth:
According to the leader of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Muslims living in America should not be bound by U.S. law. “If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land,” said Herman Mustafa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth CAIR branch. The rally in Austin was part of a nationwide effort to hold “Muslim Capitol Day” events. [ The rally was held Jan. 31, 2013 ]
– See more at: http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/we-are-above-the-law-of-the-land/

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